The Crying Grass

The crying grass (for the late Victor Jara,* Pablo Neruda and Salvador Allende) by ‘bro. zayid’ In this stadium of footlaunched spotted balls of what should be promising soccer stars… In this stadium reeking with the stench of terror and the numbing sounds of death… In this stadium whose horror riddled circling winds repel the doves and the sparrows… In this stadium echoing with insane insistent martial march of hardhoofed soldiers primed for fleshopening madness… In this stadium of gagged people’s poems of throat slashed people’s songs their bloodmuffled melodies missing their companion audience’s eyes repelling the wings and the whistles of the doves and the sparrows with their blood splatter on our faces and our shirts… In this stadium haunted with the harrowed harmonies of a guitar played with krushed fingers and a bayoneted heart… In this stadium of paraded corpses and paralyzed eyes of long lines of skulls freshly popped open in the back by gunfire… In this stadium where democracy was lynched by imperialism’s sanctioned and uniformed hyenas and then buried in an anonymous heap… There were no heroes here… Only the massacred and martrys… Their bleeding breathless torsos had just watered the crying grass and their stars had just been shot thru the eye in the sky… In this stadium… In this stadium there were no promising soccer stars to behold No footlaunched spotted balls finding goals No tickets to be bought and sold No fans on hand to cheer No smiling confetti sparkling for all to hear No cameras rolling and snapping to capture what happened in that horrific vomitous moment… In this stadium In this stadium In this stadium barking and cracking with orders to fire and the gutsplitting bursts of bullets There were no heroes… Their bloodied breathless torsos had already watered the crying grass and their stars once heated with hope had already been shot thru the eye in the sky… *Chilean people’s artist Victor Jara… Killed in a stadium massacre in a purge that accompanied the CIA sponsored military overthrow of the democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende in September 1973…Several thousand Allende supporters were rounded up by the military at a soccer stadium and slaughtered in a mass execution… Augusto Pinochet, who emerged Chile’s dictator for years, is responsible for over 3000 killings and the torture of over 30,000. There was a recent effort to have Pedro Pablo Barrientos Nunez, one of his surviving officers believed to have directly responsible for the beating and shooting of Jara, held liable for his role Jara’s death in this massacre… ©1999 all rights